Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to dining furniture and more particularly to a novel cushioned bench seat construction for dining nooks or the like.
Prior Art
In the context of the present invention, the expression "dining hook" is used in a broad sense to encompass both dining nooks for private dwellings and for commercial dining establishments, such as restaurants, coffee shops, cocktail lounges and the like. Such dining nooks include one or more bench seats and a table. This invention is concerned with bench seats for such dining nooks.
Conventional bench seats for this purpose comprise a unitary structure composed of a base, and backrest and seat cushions which are permanently joined in a bench seat configuration, generally at the seat fabricating facility. In many cases, the bench seat has a generally L-shape for conforming to a nook corner configuration. The nook table is positioned to service both legs of the seat.
The existing bench seats of this kind are deficient for several reasons. Thus, their unitary, permanently assembled construction precludes disassembly of the seats by the user when desired. Moreover, it is impossible to assemble the seat parts in various arrangements to provide bench seats of various sizes and shapes for installation in dining nook areas of differing sizes and configurations. As a consequence, a wide variety of bench seats must be fabricated to accommodate such differing nook area sizes and configurations. This bench seat construction technique is thus relatively costly and requires fabrication of a large number of differing bench seat parts. Assembly of the seat parts is also time consuming and adds substantially to the final cost of the finished bench seats.